You would think that a really serious newspaper, a really serious right leaning broadsheet like The Daily Telegraph would, after seven months realise that a man who has topped almost every poll for the Republican Party nomination prior to the forthcoming primaries would have struck some sort of chord with American voters.

The fact that he is not a politician but a businessman, a reality TV star with a larger than life reputation and a habit of “telling it how it is” and a fairly colourful CV would have at least piqued the interests of the solemn if rather pompous conservative young fogeys who pontificate daily from the elevated levels of Canary Wharf.

But it was not to be.

Yes, in the summer months when both the UK and US media regarded Donald Trump as a one hit wonder, an amusing interlude before the big boys like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker came out to play, the DT was full of jokey references and patronising asides. Hacks laughingly described as “US correspondents” performed their regular ritual of cutting and pasting quotes from the Washington Post and New York Times, presenting them as if they were golden nuggets of reportage gleaned from weeks of pounding streets from coast to coast and wearing out their own shoe leather.

All the pundits from left and right, every single self-important media figure and academic and, above all, the ghastly regiments of political consultants and operative who leech off the American body politic – they all dismissed Trump’s prospects with a disdainful sneer.

But as the autumn months got closer and Trump refused to fade the political class and their media parasites fell strangely silent – and so did the Telegraph and its hacks. There was very little reporting of the polls or the massive crowds attending Trump’s rallies because somehow it didn’t quite gel with the narrative of Trump the clown.

Until l he was endorsed by Sarah Palin – and the Telegraph went full frontal. The Telegraph Polly Fillers in particular unleashed their claws, presenting Palin as some sort of shrill, screeching fishwife who had entered the US scene as an Alaskan version of Kim Kardashian via a tasteless TV reality show. That she had been a very popular state governor, an insurgent crusader against a corrupt Republican establishment in the pocket of Big Oil as conveniently omitted.

The Telegraph campaign against Trump finally reached its crescendo with an article penned by former BBC hack Matt Frei, pimping his Channel 4 documentary, sneering at Trump, his supporters and, of course Palin (including the totally false claim that her selection by McCain as candidate for VP lost him the 2008 election). A day or so later one of the Telegraph’s boy wonders, a young man with zero knowledge of US politics outside of watching “The West Wing”, grandly proclaimed as the torpedo that would finally sink The Trumptanic.

At no time has there been any serious attempt in the pages of the Telegraph to present a serious analysis of the key question – why has Trump, derided by the media, the punditocracy and the professional political class, has nevertheless gained such support. There has been nothing about the apparent extent of blue collar support, much of it from traditionally Democrat voting swathes of the electorate or the suggestion that he has a significant degree of interest from black voters. No mention either of some evidence that he has reached across to women and younger voters.

There is, at times, a reference to “anger” about illegal immigrants and their willingness to work for wages much lower than the American born working class. – or social and economic upheaval caused by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to Asia. But the DT hacks never dig deeper into that manifestation of anger or pursue a line of thought that might question the inevitability of such a process.

Above all, our “journalists “are unwilling to confront the truth of the high degree of contempt felt by ordinary Americans for the media and its refusal to raise those issues in print or on air for fear of falling foul of the great god of the comfortably off chattering classes, the god of political correctness – buttressed, of course, by the availability of a cheap immigrant servant class that allows them to live a very comfortable life at very low cost.

A pity, for, once upon a time, the Telegraph really was a newspaper that treated the world seriously. Unfortunately, it has whored itself out to shallowness and empty posturing

Here is my bottom line up front: Palin is right far more times than she is wrong, and is right far more times than most of the current elected GOP leadership. The fact that she has yet another platform to get her views and analysis out there is a GOOD thing.

For those folks who have a problem with her accent, her folksy humor, and her overall presentation, I humbly suggest that you turn the monitor volume down, and just be thankful that she is on the side of conservatives who want to save the country.

As a native Philadelphian raised in Upstate NY, I am good with her Alaskan twang, and would rather listen to her than to stomach one more syllable from some jack wagon in the Northeast or Left Coast who think themselves mightier than the rest of us (and thus more capable of running the country).

She’s no goddess, no saint, no single fountain of all that is good and right, but she is still more effective than so many who secretly wish they had her platform, her raw rockstar power, and her blessings.

Living and loving life, while living rent-free in the minds of statists and haters… Sarah Palin is one fortunate woman.

In the months since November and the Romney debacle it would appear that Hot Air has almost become zombieville if you look at the number of comments generated by each post. Maybe it’s because many became embarrassed by the shameless shilling for Romney on HA (remember Erika Johnsen claiming that everyone was so pumped for Romney? How Allah seemed to be kept away from Romney posts?). Or maybe it has just lost the spark with Ed and co just going through the motions.

But this weekend the site came alive – with a post by Allah on Sarah Palin’s reported decision to refuse to renew her contract with Fox. An assortment of the palinphobe regulars came out of the woodwork saying how irrelevant she was…..so yesterday….

Yep – so irrelevant that the post smashed through the thousand comment barrier.

Fascinating thread at Legal Insurrection on the “alleged” fading of the Tea Party Movement after the high water mark of 2010

The best comment came from Midwest Rhino who gave a common sense down to earth analysis of the TP, it’s appeal and it’s fault lines…and if anything proved his/her point it was some of the other comments on the thread about abortion and Ron Paul.
It is interesting to note that, although Sarah Palin is a staunch opponent of abortion she appeared never to have brought that into any speech she made at a TP event – instead the recurring theme was fiscal sanity, small govt and the dangers of crony capitalism…..

More than anything, the decline in numbers shows the power of the left to control the message.
When Santelli first did his rant, the “Tea Party” was a big hit. As the grass roots movement developed, the left saw the threat and aimed their big guns at it to bombard it with rhetoric of racism, ignorance, and hate.
Working from the other side, the hard evangelicals saw it as an opportunity to usurp some vitality and new people (and a threat to their grip on the GOP). They infiltrated with demands on prayer and abortion. This part, I believe, was the more effective “killer” of the young movement.

I’d like to see Rasmussen break down what people think the tea party stands for. It seems many think Akin was Tea Party, just because of his hard and stupid statements on abortion.

Hopefully Cruz will learn to say abortion laws are above his pay grade, or some such thing. He may not believe in ANY abortion, but laws for other beliefs are a decision for judges in high courts. Tea partiers are about a restrained government and fiscal sanity. NOT about religion forcing less “tolerance” on “evil unbelievers”. (though the inhumanity of late term abortions might have some traction)

The Democrats and evangelicals effectively cut the tea party baby in half by dividing it on religion, and tarring everyone as racist and ignorant. Palin (yes, she’s wonderful) was used as the personification of this, and she’s still being attacked by Leno et. al., apparently to continue driving the stake in.

A few weeks ago a majority of Americans voted to put the lunatics in charge of the asylum. That is essentially what Matt Welch was saying in a rather sombre piece at Reason – an article so depressing it ought to have had a health warning attached.

If elections are up-or-down assessments of politicians’ job performance, then this was a vote in favor of trillion-dollar annual deficits, bailout economics, and failing the minimum competence test of passing an annual budget. Federal policy for four years has produced lousy short-term results for the price of long-term insolvency, and now the characters responsible for this misgovernance have been given a pat on the head.

So, just because Milliband and Balls are being constantly mocked in many of the public prints for their infantile money grows on trees rhetoric against public spending cuts, don’t imagine that our own band of lunatics cannot possibly party their way to power here in the UK in 2015….

In 2008 the Republican president was extremely unpopular, there was a financial crash, a worrying war and a media pushing two narratives – the possibility of wiping away the scars of racism by electing a black president and an orchestrated demonisation of the GOP VP candidate with lies and sexist insults.

In 2012 the economy was still broken, the worrying war was still simmering away and the Democratic administration was racked with scandals. The Republican candidates were clean cut, inoffensive and apparently competent politicians completely acceptable to the GOP establishment and the media.

Explain why the 2012 Republican ticket lost the election and got three and a half million fewer votes than the 2008 ticket
Please send your answers, accompanied with your apologies, to a certain lady in Wasilla, Alaska.

So, within a few hours the long saga of the US Presidential election will be over. Compared to our own bursts of six week frenetic electioneering, the American process is a long drawn out affair which began in the early autumn of 2011 when Republican hopefuls started throwing their hats into the ring.

I have never been a great fan of Mitt Romney. He has a well deserved reputation for shifting his political stances according to prevailing winds and he always distanced himself from the Tea Party revolution that emerged, unbidden, from the wreckage of the 2006 and 2008 GOP defeats.

His problem with many conservative Republicans, at present submerged beneath the soundbites and overblown rhetoric of whistlestop campaigning, is that once in the White House he would revert to type and pursue a don’t rock the boat, steady as she goes establishment pleasing Bush style governance that would kick the can of America’s dysfunctional indebtedness further down the road for Willow Palin’s generation to sort out.

Nevertheless, since the alternative is allowing Obama and his seedy gang of hacks an opportunity to set in concrete their goal of turning America into John Lennon Imagine World, it seems to me that Romney is the least worst alternative.

The other solid reason for enjoying a Romney victory would be the delights of relishing the deflated balloons at the BBC which, throughout the campaign, has scarcely deigned, via the wretched duo of Mark Mardell and Jonny Dymond, to conceal a sneering disregard for the views of flyover USA. Throw in the tears of Obama’s wealthy groupies in Hollywood and his mainstream media palace guard and it would be a repeat of that glorious November in 2004 when GWB confounded the elite and won his second term fair and square with the bonus of congressional control.

Unfortunately the GOP establishment threw that magnificent moment away in subsequent years. Would Romney do the same?

Perhaps.

But remember, during Bush’s second term, there was no figure who symbolised the spirit of conservative resistance. With President Romney he and his advisers would always be aware of the presence of Sarah Palin, always ready with a red hot poker near the presidential derriere to keep him on the straight and narrow……

I know, I know it’s National Review and Erika Johnsen over at Hot Air will say it’s all part of Romney’s 378 point plan , yes siree, so stay pumped and keep on clicking onto us and don’t get annoyed by that irritating ad that always pops up…….

This Politico story is almost too depressing to contemplate:
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It gets worse, so be sure to read the whole thing to make sure you ruin your week off right.
Meanwhile, it’s a good thing for Romney that absolutely nothing of any interest has been going on in the world this past week, and steady-as-he-goes Mitt can keep reminding the American public, when he bothers to emerge from the foxhole into which the media has driven him, that President Obama’s a nice guy, but by golly he’s in over his head, and gee whiz I saved the Olympics and, dadgummit, a CFO is just what this country needs right now. (Although even that’s not working any more.)

Not to worry..almost certainly within the next two days the Death Star will appear, Romney will step out of his pseudo plastic skin and hurl a rain of thunderbolts onto Obama’s head. The President will crumble and Mitt will shoot into a 20 point lead – it must be true because the people at Hot Air keep on saying that.

Yes folks it will need fire, passion and a clear vision of what the candidate stands for to get those supporters crawling barelegged over broken glass to get out the vote – so thank goodness Sarah Palin wasn’t nominated. If she had been the GOP candidate Obama would be leading in the polls by now….

According to Twitter hashtag #RNCPowerGrab many Tea Partiers and GOP grassroots activists are angered by the RNC rule changes – Michelle Malkin is the lightning conductor for this so go to her for the latest.

Don’t bother with Hot Air. It has become an unadulterated Romneyfest and has stuck its head in the sand over this.

What I just can’t understand is how the Romney machine can be so stupid as to alienate the very people who dug the Republican Party out of the grave in 2010. Indeed, some could well be saying to themselves if this is a portent of how a Romney administration might behave maybe it would be best to concentrate on winning the senate and leave Mitt swinging in the wind.

Nevertheless however things go in November it is possible that Sarah Palin will emerge as one of the most powerful political forces on the right either within or without the GOP.

If Mitt loses it will merely underline her strictures about the good ol’ boys beltway network and their drive for power devoid of principle and could lead either to the reshaping of the Republican Party or even its replacement by a new party and in either situation she could, if she chose, play a key role

If Mitt wins he will be constantly aware that Palin will be close behind his derriere with a red hot poker ready to keep him to the strait and narrow (Matthew 7:13/14)

Not bad for for a woman with minimal staff, no machine who operates mainly from a keyboard beside an icy lake thousands of miles away from Washington and New York – and who is despised by Hollywood, the media, the Democrats and the Republican establishment….

Only cursory mentions over here about the Wisconsin Recall election but the victory of tea party supported Governor Scott Walker has sent a massive bolt of lightning into Washington and President Obama’s palace guard in the US media.

Of course, if you were to believe the BBC’s ludicrous Jonny Dymond you would think that Walker’s victory was all down to big business and a vocal and often vicious union/left coalition from within and outside Wisconsin simply did not exist…

Governor Walker got a lot of support from GOP heavyweights over the last few weeks but in the early months of 2011 when the fight was fiercest and Walker and his supporters were under siege only one GOP voice braved the mob and went to Wisconsin to rally the tea party….